The Pittsburgh Steelers Have A BIG PROBLEM On Defense They MUST Fix (It’s Not What You Think It Is)

The Pittsburgh Steelers Have A BIG PROBLEM On Defense They MUST Fix (It’s Not What You Think It Is)

The Pittsburgh Steelers have a big problem on defense this year and it’s probably not what you think it is. Welcome in to Steelers Talk. I’m your host, Jax Sperry. Today we’re going to be breaking down what I believe to be the biggest problem with the Pittsburgh Steelers. talk about some of the misconceptions about this Steelers defense on Steelers Twitter and then uh talk about some of the ways that the Steelers can go about fixing this big problem that I think’s got to be fixed if this defense wants to turn it around this season. Now, the good news is I think the issue that I’m going to be talking about today, guys, is absolutely fixable for the black and gold. Just like how the offensive issues early on in the season were fixable and the Steelers brought out their jumbo personnel packages, I think the Steelers are just a few tweaks away from really uh getting this defense to play at a top 10 or even top five level. Uh so we’re going to talk about that on today’s show. Before we get into it today, make sure you click that subscribe button because if you guys are tired of the talking heads that couldn’t tell you the difference between cover four and cover six, uh trying to give football takes, that’s not what we do here on Steelers Talk. We try to give level-headed, nuanced, in-depth content uh based on the film uh so you guys always know what’s what and what the film actually says about the Pittsburgh Steelers. All right, so if you guys want uh more than just noise here on Steelers Talk when it comes to your Steelers content every single day, that’s why we are the largest individually Steelers news program anywhere here on YouTube. Uh so join the over 100K already subscribed right now by joining the Steelers Talk family. Now, we have to start here with this. Obviously, the Pittsburgh Steelers defense in 2025 is underperforming, especially relative to the expectations heading into the season. And then also relative to how much money this defense is making. The Steelers once again, and it’s been a trend here over the last several seasons now where the Pittsburgh Steelers have had the NFL’s most expensive defense. And you know, we could go through the entire defensive roster and how they gave quite a bit of money uh to uh to Darius Slay and some of these other kind of smaller contracts, but let’s just take a look at the five biggest contracts for the Pittsburgh Steelers on defense right now. Of course, you give that mega deal and that mega extension to TJ Watt this off season, $123 million added over three years to his current contract. Then you got Jaylen Ramsay, who restructured his deal for a four-year deal worth almost $85 million. Alex Heismith on his current deal is making 68. Patrick Queen got 41 over three years. And then Cam Hayward honestly on a steel 29 million over two years. And just these five players alone, guys, on on the totality of their contracts, the Pittsburgh Steelers are spending almost $350 million on just these five players. And that’s not even counting other veterans like Cole Hulkcom and Darius Slay and others here on this Steelers defense that are also making quite a bit of money. And despite the expectations and despite the veteran presence and despite the money being spent here in Pittsburgh, here is where the Pittsburgh Steelers currently stand when it comes to their defense. Right now, they’re bottom half of the league in scoring defense. All right, they’re in the bottom five of the league in yards per game allowed. They’re a little bit better in yards per play allowed, but they’re still in the bottom half of the league. EPA per play bottom 10 in the league. Success rate 18th again. And then you got third down percentage sitting at 25th. And then the two things that the Steelers defense have actually done pretty well this year is at their top three in red zone percentage. So they’re not giving up a ton of touchdowns in the red area. Uh that’s something that the Steelers have been pretty good at uh pretty consistently throughout the seasons. And then another thing that the Steelers defense has been pretty consistent at throughout the years is takeaways. They’re currently fifth in the National Football League. And by the way, they’re fifth still in the National Football League through seven weeks despite having a by-week and despite not having a turnover in the last two weeks. So, they were really stacking them there over the course of a few weeks there, especially in the Patriots game. So, what exactly is going wrong with this defense? All right. Obviously, they have a lot of talent here. Obviously, there’s a lot of money being spent on this defense. And obviously, the expectations coming into the season were skyhigh. I mean, like DK Metaf was saying like this was the best defense he’s ever seen. Juan Thornnehill said that he thinks this can be one of the best defenses of all time. Like there was a lot of expectations placed on this unit and you know there’s just no way around it guys. This unit has severely underperformed expectations this year. Now, what many people think the problem is here in Pittsburgh is that Pittsburgh runs a quote unquote static soft zone coverage defense and they kind of just sit in cover three and in cover two and they don’t do any postnap rotations and they don’t do any pre- snap disguises and they don’t do anything creative and it’s an old school defense and Mike Tomlin and Terrell Austin refuse to make any sort of adjustments whatsoever. They never play man, all these different things. And that’s just not the case when you watch the Pittsburgh Steelers film, guys. All right, just taking the example of the Cincinnati Bengals game last Thursday night. All right, Joe Flacco had 47 pass attempts versus this defense last week. You want to guess how many of those 47 pass attempts were the Steelers sit sat in a quote unquote static zone? Only four times. All right, that’s less than 10% of the defensive snaps where the Pittsburgh Steelers showed uh the offense a pre- snap look and then went out to zone coverage. All right, so um you know, it’s just not very often. In fact, when the Steelers play zone, more often than not, they actually use a postnap rotation or a pre-nap disguise. Um which is certainly in line with a lot of the modern defenses in the National Football League. And honestly, when the Steelers are playing quote unquote static defense, it’s mostly when they’re playing man coverage. And we’ll talk about uh man coverage later in the show here, guys. But per my charting from last week’s Thursday night loss versus Cincinnati, they had 20 post snap rotations. All right, so that’s over 40% of the defensive snaps that the Cincinnati Bengals are passing the football that the Pittsburgh Steelers were rotating to a different coverage than what they were showing pre- snap. Okay. Then they had 13 quote unquote exotic coverage calls. So, double teams, buzz looks, all these different things that you know are not in your basic set of coverages. All right. 20 over 25% of the Steelers defensive calls versus Cincinnati were in the exotic category. All right. Then 27 of the 47 pass attempts were in man coverage. All right. All I heard on Steelers Twitter, especially during and after the game, was we’re just sitting in zone coverage and we’re not making any adjustments. In fact, no, they were sitting in man coverage way more than the NFL average over 50%. Just so you guys know, NFL defense is on average sit in man coverage like maybe 20 25% of the time. The Steelers over half of their defensive snaps against the pass on Thursday were in man coverage. And they ran 17 different types of coverage. So if you’re somebody that thinks the Steelers just won basic cover three and basic cover two and they just sit in those soft zones all day, you just don’t watch the film. All right? You’re kind of telling on yourself that, you know, you just don’t really understand the way that this Steelers defense is trying to play football. Um, and you know, this defense at, you know, and I’ve watched every single snap of this team on film on defense this year. Uh, it’s just not a very static zony type of team. And also, Pittsburgh has made certain adjustments to this to this defense already this year. They started this year really playing a lot of uh fiveman uh kind of base looks uh on the defensive line where they had five defensive linemen. Now, after uh now since Deshawn Elliott has been back, they’ve been playing a lot of big nickel with Jaylen Ramsay in the slot and Deshawn Elliott playing in the box quite a bit and that opens them up to do a lot of creative blitz looks and all these different things. All right. So, and they’re also playing a lot more wide n technique on the defensive line than what we’ve seen from the Steelers team in years past. So, it’s not like the Steelers haven’t been making adjustments as the Steelers season has gone on. They absolutely have. Um, it’s just some of it’s just some of the adjustments they tried making versus Cincinnati just didn’t work. And I want to be abundantly clear here, guys. All right. I Pittsburgh’s game plan was not great versus Cincinnati. On a short week, you could tell um that it just wasn’t up to snuff, frankly, and especially versus Jamar Chase. Like, at some point in that game, he was just dominating so much and he was just getting so many uh passes and so many uh opportunities that the Steelers should have just said, you know what? We have to double team this guy. And they just really didn’t do that all that much. They only doubled him twice throughout the entire game. And you know, they either tried to man him up one-on-one, which almost never worked, especially when Jaylen Ramsey or Darius Slay were on him, or they would play zone coverage where Jamar Chase would find that soft spot in the zone, and Joe Flacco would do a really good job processing the defense and the postnap rotations that the Steelers were playing uh to find Jamar Chase uh for for for those, you know, what ended up being 16 completions. But I really do think, guys, that the Cincinnati Bengals deserve more credit than what they’re getting from Steelers Nation after that win. I thought the offensive line looked as good as they had looked all season long. I watched their entire season on offense in preparation for this game, guys, and for our preview. Uh, and like that offensive line did not look that good all season long. They played their best game by far. Then also Joe Flacco, I thought he did a really good job um you know uh adjusting to the postnap rotations that the Pittsburgh Steelers were were were were throwing at him. I mean it’s not easy to take a snap and get the ball uh off as fast as he was. I think his time to throw average time to throw is like 2.2 seconds. That’s not easy to do when you have to mentally process a defense post snap and they are shifting their coverage uh to something different than what they’re showing to you pre- snap. So Joe Flacco, even though, you know, I don’t think it was like a sensational superstar level performance, like he had a really good performance and he was accurate, he was really good uh adjusting to the postnap rotations that the Pittsburgh Steelers were running on defense. And I think Joe Flacco deserves more credit for the performance that he had on Thursday Night Football. And then just my take on the entire situation and kind of this take that the Steelers run a quote unquote static defense is that you know it’s a lazy it’s just a lazy thing people say you know that’s just a talking point that’s thrown out there on Twitter a lot so people think it’s true but like the people that watch the film on the Pittsburgh Steelers they understand that that’s just not the case when it comes to this team. Now that doesn’t mean that the Steelers aren’t without their problems. In fact I think they have a very big problem that they have to address in the weeks to come. And coming up next here on Steelers Talk, I’m going to tell you exactly what that big problem is. And I’m going to tell you the ways that the Pittsburgh Steelers can help alleviate that big problem as we head out uh you know into as we’re approaching midway through the 2025 NFL season here in Pittsburgh. So, what say you guys? Let me know down there in the comments section. What is the biggest issue with the Steelers defense this year? I’m going to give my take on this here in just a second, but this will be the pin comment on today’s show in just a second here. I’m going to tell you about our sponsor today at Omaha Stakes. And while I tell you about our sponsor today, let me know what you guys think the biggest issue with the Steelers defense is this year. With that, I have a word from our sponsor today at Omaha Stakes. And Omaha Stakes is the official sponsor of tailgating. From legendary burgers to mouthwatering steaks, deli style franks, and so much more. You’ll elevate your next game day get together with America’s original butcher. 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So, in my opinion, guys, based on my film study and what I think is going wrong with the Pittsburgh Steelers right now, I think the biggest problem that the Pittsburgh Steelers have specifically in pass defense is that they run a lot of man coverage for a team that is not very good in man. Uh, you know, that’s just really what it comes down to for me. And you know, I think when you look at what Mike Tomlin and what his vision for this defense was heading into the year, all right, he wanted to build a team that was capable of going up one-on-one versus teams like Cincinnati and and some of these other teams with a lot of weapons and still be able to play man coverage uh on the back end. All right? And you know, if you can play man coverage, that is a really good way to play football. If you have a secondary that’s capable of locking down a team in man, that can turn you into one of the best defenses in the National Football League. But it’s very difficult to do because you need all three of your starting corners to be able to man people up consistently. And the Pittsburgh Steelers, frankly, haven’t been able to do that to this point. This is Mike Tomlin explaining his vision for the defense, especially when it comes to the quarterback room back during training camp. He said, “You got to be able to play man-to-man, particularly versus the elite and deep groups.” And the talent that we’ve acquired at that position, part particularly the quarterback position, allows us to do that in all circumstances. When you got guys like Jaylen Ramsay, Slay, and Joey Porter Jr., man, we can match up and play man-to-man versus anyone. And listen, man, like if Jaylen Ramsey and Darius Slay were still in their primes, I would agree with Mike Tomlin. But the reality is those guys are not in their athletic primes anymore. All right? they have to be more instinctual uh type of players, you know, with their eyes on the quarterback and, you know, kind of use their smarts to anticipate uh uh, you know, routes and all these different things to be able to break up passes. But when you play a lot of man, that relies a lot on pure athleticism. And frankly, Darius Slay is 34 years old and he has certainly slowed down from his days where he used to be a pretty darn good uh uh man corner. And then Jaylen Ramsey used to be one of the premier uh press man corners in the league in Jacksonville. But over the last several years, he’s had to adjust his game to be more of a zone corner. And you know, it just wasn’t a good plan. And it just hasn’t been a good plan to play these two in man coverage as much as Mike Tomlin has to start this season. And frankly, thinking that Darius Slay and Jaylen Ramsay were going to be able to guard Jamar Chase one-on-one was straight up hubris by Mike Tomlin. Okay. Like in hindsight, it was just a really stupid decision. I hope they really learn from that mistake because they just don’t have the athletic chops to be able to uh stick with one of the most athletically gifted and technically sound wide receivers in football today. And really there there’s not many corners that can legitimately go up one-on-one versus Jamar Chase. You just had to have a better plan against Chase. And in my opinion, that plan would have included a lot more pure double teams and press coverage on Jamar Chase. But we didn’t see that from the Steelers. And that was uh and that’s a legitimate uh you know gripe and a legitimate criticism that you can lay at the feet at Tara Lost and Mike Tomlin in this football game. They went into a game plan thinking that Jaylen Ramsay was still good enough to go up one-on-one versus Jamar Chase and that just wasn’t the case. And you know that hubris led to a fantastic performance from Chase, one of the best of his career. And frankly, uh Ramsay and Slay have been getting beaten man coverage all season long. All right. Um, you know, I think that Ramsay is better than Slay is in man coverage at this point, but the reason why Darius Slay was able to to stay relevant in Philadelphia into his 30s was because they played a lot of offzone, a lot of, you know, man-match stuff from playing off zone. Like, he doesn’t play a lot of press. He didn’t play a lot of press in his 30s when he was with the Philadelphia Eagles. So now he’s coming here and he’s playing more press and he’s playing more true man coverage on an island and it’s just not working out with him, you know, continuously losing his athleticism year in and year out at this point. And specifically, I think the Pittsburgh Steelers should run a lot less cover one blitz. All right, this look right here is something very similar to what the Steelers run on a very uh consistent basis. Now, the Steelers um don’t necessarily uh have that five down penny front there. Uh but you know, uh they run it at a four with wide nine. But, you know, you guys get the idea. Man coverage across the board except for a deep post safety. Okay? So, essentially what that does is it puts all the corners one-on-one on an island versus the receiver that they’re playing against. And you know what quarterbacks, what NFL quarterbacks see when they see this pre- snap, they’re licking their chops and they’re saying, “Where’s my best receiver? I’m going to look for that matchup.” And the really big thing about cover one blitz, guys, is that because you don’t have an intermediate zone defender here, that leaves the middle of the field wide ass open, okay? And especially when you play your corners off like the Steelers do in this type of coverage, that allows really free access to the middle of the field. And if you if you’re wondering why the Steelers give up so many uh breakers over the middle of the field in breakers and why the middle of the field has been poorest for this Steelers pass defense this year, it’s because they’re not holding up in man coverage and they don’t have that intermediate zone defender there to negate these quarterbacks from throwing over the middle of the field. Now, the Steelers do throw in cover one robber and they do throw in cover one hole and there there will be times where they have that intermediate zoden defender, but I would say at least like 75% of the time the Steelers if they’re playing cover one, they’re playing a very similar iteration to this where they’re putting these corners on an island. And plain and simply, guys, they’re just losing and it’s leading to a lot of chunk plays down the field. So, what does Pittsburgh need to do? They need to give these guys help. Okay? because Darius Slay and and Jaylen Ramsey, like I think they’re still they’re still capable of playing some pretty decent ball, but you got to play them in the right system. They’re not athletic, you know, athletically gifted enough at this point in their careers at this point to be able to hold up against the Jackson Smith and Jigbas of the world in man coverage, the Garrett Wilsons of the world in man in man coverage. U you know, the Justin Jeffersons of the world in man coverage and the Jamar Chases in man coverage. All right, so one way to help, there’s a couple ways that you can help out these corners. Number one is just play more zone coverage. Okay. Um, like if you if you have zones out there, that means, you know, nobody’s up one-on-one so nobody can get cooked one-on-one. Okay. So, it’s all about instincts. It’s about having your eyes on the quarterback. It’s about reading zone con route concepts and then jumping routes. All right. Playing with instincts. And that’s what Jaylen Ramsay is best at at this point. He’s still a really good and I would argue one of the best slot corners in the league when playing zone. Uh, because his intelligence and his instincts and, you know, his his physicality, I mean, it’s unmatched, right? So, I would say zone would allow Slay and Ramsay to play to their strengths and play more instinctively as opposed to relying on their athleticism to hold up one-on-one and man coverage, especially when you don’t have uh inside help uh there with that intermediate zone defender. Now, I want to be abundantly clear here. You know, I don’t want the Steelers to play static zone. All right? And Frank and like we talked about earlier, that’s not what the Steelers do. The Steelers usually like to play with two high safeties when they play zone and they like to bring down one of their two high safeties uh into a buzz looking in their cover threes. Um and then they like to do non-traditional Tampa. Mike Tomlin’s been known for those non-traditional Tampa looks for a very long time. Sometimes they’ll do inverted cover two. Like they will mix things up in zone coverage. And that’s just something that I think they need to get in their bag with a little bit more. You know, I think that, you know, continuously making these quarterbacks think that extra second is going to allow this pass rush to get home. And I think a a consistent kind of theme with quarterbacks facing the Steelers defense this year is that they’re getting the ball out quick because they’re seeing man coverage pre- snap and they’re just kind of identifying a matchup that they like and then they’re getting the ball out fast. But if you play more zone and you disguise that zone coverage like the Steelers do, frankly, pretty darn well. If you play more of that kind of stuff, it’s going to make those quarterbacks think that extra second, which gives that uh which gives TJ Watt, Nick Herbick, Alex Heisman, Kamay or Dererick Harmon just that extra second to get uh pressure on the quarterback and make an impact on the football game. So Steelers should absolutely uh be creative in the zones that they deploy. But frankly guys, the modern NFL is a zone defense league. All right? You look at the Mike McDonald’s of the world, the Jesse Minners of the world. All right? All these uh you know, new school defenses, they run a lot of zone. All right? like the the modern NFL defense runs like 20 to 25% man coverage and the Steelers run way more than that to start this season. So, I think that, you know, Pittsburgh should maybe lean a little bit more into their zone coverages because I think that leans into the strengths of their older but very experienced and instinctual cornerbacks in Jaylen Ramsay and Darius Slay. Another way to help is just put if you if when you do play man coverage when you do go to cover one, you know, take that fifth rusher that you like to send on the blitz and just use that defender to put him into the hole or, you know, use cover one robber and, you know, start with two high safeties, bring one of the safeties down and, you know, take and and cut crossers and, you know, take away those intermediate middle routes cuz until you take away those intermediate middle routes versus this cover one blitz, they’re going to continuously uh scheme people open with their best receiver to have these inbreaking routes versus Darius Slay and Jaylen Ramsey and the Steelers are going to continuously get cooked on it. So, if you want to play man, that’s fine. I think that you should be mixing in man from time to time, especially when you have uh an advantage in personnel. But, you know, you shouldn’t just play cover one blitz time and time and time again, like double digit times a game because the defenses are going to know it’s coming and they’re going to be ready for it just like the Cincinnati Bengals were. Um, and you know that intermediate middle zone guy can really go a long way because you know when you’re playing cover one, usually corners are playing with outside leverage, which of course means that those inb breakers are even more likely to happen and they’re going to have an advantage versus the man coverage defender. But if you have not only that deep post safety, but also that intermediate zone player, then you know, you’ve got that middle of the field somewhat, you know, taken advantage of there and and and kind of locked down because if they take that inbreaker, boom, you’ve got that intermediate zone defender to negate that pass over the middle of the field. So, I think the Steelers pass rush and their pass rush players, they’re highly paid enough and they’re good enough to win with four rushers. I don’t understand why the Steelers feel like they need to rush five all the time. like they want to go back to this like quote unquote Blitzburg style of defense where you’re rushing five all the time. It’s like you know I understand you know you want to mix things up and you know confusing quarterbacks you know you know putting lots of people at the line of scrimmage to make them think that more people are coming and then dropping out all that different stuff. I get all that but like TJ Watt is really highly paid. Nick Herbig is really freaking good. Alex Heismith is really freaking good. Cam Hayward’s an all procaliber player. Count Benson is very disruptive. Like you can get home with four. There’s no reason to have to use that fifth defender necessarily to get home. And if it allows uh you know, if dropping that extra defender into coverage allows these quarterbacks to hold that ball that extra second, I think that’s only going to make this Steelers pass rush more effective. I think it’s only going to make the Steelers defense more effective moving forward. A third way to help out Jaylen Ramsey and Darius Slay uh is to use Joey Porter Jr. as what’s referred to as a Meg Defender. All right? And what Meg uh refers to, at least in Sabanese, is man everywhere he goes. All right? And this is kind of what’s referred to as putting a guy on an island and then shifting zone coverage away from that one player. So, usually this is something where you see in 3x one formations where we’ve got three eligible receivers to one side of the field, you got one eligible to one side of the field. So, what the Steelers will do and what a lot of these Sabin type of teams will do is that they’ll put that number one corner on the outside versus that single receiver on one side and just play man coverage versus that guy with no safety help over the top. And Porter can do that because he’s one of the best press jam corners in the league. He’s got some just go go go gadget long arms, super physical. He can really do that stuff. All right, that’s his strength. He’s not a good zone corner. So, if you can, you know, find those opportunities to just man him up and then play zone on the backside there, it’s going to condense those throwing windows for opposing quarterbacks even more and you can take away uh uh pretty much, you know, one receiver in the concept because Joey Porter Jr. can shut down people and press m press jam coverage. So, I think that, you know, that is something the Steelers should certainly uh you know, get into their bag a bit more as Joey Porter Jr. continues uh you know to to to get ramped up this season after coming back from an injury. And you know, Joey honestly is Pittsburgh’s only true man corner in my opinion. Like Jaylen Ramsay’s at his best when he’s got his eyes on the quarterback and he’s reading them. Same thing with Darius Slay. Okay. Joey Porter Jr. is the guy in the Steelers defense that’s actually not very good at that. He’s not very good in zone coverage. He what he has done his entire life and what he’s really freaking good at is getting in a wide receivers’s face, jamming him with his long arms and shutting them down for the rep. So that’s what the Steelers should do with him. So um you know I think that that would be a really good way to condense throwing windows, take away a receiver on one side of the field. Joey Porter Jr. can be a real X factor for this Steelers defense guys if Mike Tomlin and Terrell Austin can use him in the right way. And you know like I said what you can do you can lock Joey Porter Jr. on a wide receiver in man coverage and then rotate the rest of that uh coverage to the backside of the concept there and condense throwing windows and make make things even tougher for opposing quarterbacks uh to find those open zone windows. Uh but then another thing that you could do like another option especially if you want to continue to play more man coverage is to bench Darius Slay and uh in favor of Brandon Eckles. Okay. Okay. And Eckles was brought in as a backup, as somebody that can play on the outside and on the inside, but uh Eckles, I think you can make an argument, has been maybe the most effective outside corner for the Steelers this year on film. Uh he’s pretty good in man and zone. You know, he’s he doesn’t make a lot of mental mistakes like frankly Darius Slay has. He has a number of coverage busts this year. Uh Eckles doesn’t have those same mistakes on film. And you guys can see here with the PFF grading this year. And of course, PFF grading is not gospel or anything like that. But currently, Brandon Eckles is the highest grading graded corner on the entire Steelers defense with a 66.1 grade. That’s in the top 35 among corners right now. And then you got Darius Slay at 54.7. Um, you know, that’s not even in the top 70 among corners right now. So, that’s not terrible necessarily, but it’s certainly not great and it’s certainly not worth the money that the Steelers spent on him this off season. Um, and you know, if you want to get the most out of Slay, like I said, you can play more zone coverage. Um, you know, you can have him have his eyes on the quarterback more and not play so much man. But if you want to continue with this kind of man centered philosophy, Brandon Eckles brings a lot more speed to the table than Slay does. And I think he’d be a better fit as this team’s number two outside corner if you want to continue playing as much man as you’re playing. So, who should start? Let me know down there in the comments section. Should they keep starting Darius Slay, type D? Yes. or do would you rather go with Brandon Eckles? Type BE down there in the comments section. Uh, now I want to finish up here uh with talking about the run game because we’ve talked a lot about the passing defense today, but I think a lot of you are probably sitting at home right now saying, “But Jack, like we didn’t do a good job against the run either versus Cincinnati.” And you’d be 100% correct about that. Okay. And when you look at the numbers uh as a whole for the Pittsburgh Steelers defending the run, um, you know, it’s kind of similar to their numbers as a whole on defense this year as an entire unit, right? their bottom half of the league in, you know, yards per carry, EPA per rush, and success rate. And, you know, a lot of this is because, you know, obviously Cincinnati didn’t play well and then the first two weeks of the season, you didn’t play well. Uh, but you didn’t have Joey Porter Jr. out there, you didn’t have Deshawn Elliot out there, you didn’t have Derek Harmon out there those first two weeks for for most of it, and that really hurt this Steelers run defense. Um, and you guys can take a look here over the last four games for the Steelers, what their uh, you know, rushing production for their opponents have looked like. So, you know, against the Patriots, first game for Derrick Harmon, and then you had Jabriel Peppers injected into that game as well. You had you had a much better uh, performance than you did against the Jets and the Seahawks, only 4.1 yards per carry. Then against the Vikings, that went down to 3.5. Really good performance from the Steelers run defense there uh, defending Jordan Mason. Then you shut down Quinn Sean Judkins in the Browns run game. Only 65 yards on the ground for Cleveland that game and just a 3.8 yards per carry average. But then, you know, you regress uh in week seven on Thursday Night Football. You give up 7.4 yards per carry to Chase Brown. So, uh obviously not fantastic there. You regress a little bit, but I’ve seen enough good film from the Steelers and run defense this year to have hope. All right. during that week 3 to six stretch where you play those three games against the Patriots, Vikings, and Browns and you know multiple decent run games there. All right, you were first in the league in EPA per rush. So, you know, they were getting after it. Then the success rate was seventh. Okay, so you’re having you were collecting TFLs. Patrick Queen was playing with his hair on fire. All right, Dererick Harmon was phenomenal in injecting some run defense into the interior of this defensive line. Um, and you know, guys like Deshawn Elliott and guys like Jaylen Ramsey still some of the best, you know, tackling and run defending safeties in the National Football League. The problem with the Steelers run defense to this point is that it’s been really feast or famine. What I mean by that is that it’s extremely aggressive and they shoot gaps and, you know, sometimes there’s too many heroes on this Steelers defense is the way I like to put it. What I mean by that is that people will shoot a gap that they’re not responsible for uh and then they leave a a hole wide open in the in the run fit that they’re supposed to be uh in. And that is that’s exactly what happened versus Cincinnati. Uh Chuck Clark did it multiple times. Deshawn Elliott was out of position a couple times. Patrick Queen was out of position a couple of times. And you know, when you have guys that are not in their run fit, it’s going to create massive rushing windows and it’s going to lead to explosive runs. That’s what happened with Bruce Hall in New York. That’s what happened with Kenneth Walker in week two in versus Seattle. That’s what happened with Chase Brown on week seven versus Cincinnati. So, the message for the Steelers coaching staff needs to be just do your job. All right. Maybe we won’t have as many phenomenal TFL type of plays, but you know what? I would rather give up two yards than, you know, try and get a negative two yard play, but we give up a 20 yard play because we weren’t in the right position, right? So, I would rather, you know, keep, you know, everything in front of us, not try and be, you know, you know, too crazy and try to make big plays happen. Doesn’t mean you’re completely passive and you can still try and make things happen within reason, but we have to be smarter with the way that we’re shooting gaps, that we’re uh, you know, accounting for our run fits, all these different things. And of course, you know, the the just the fundamentals need to be better, holding the line of scrimmage, winning the line of scrimmage, those sort of things uh just need to be better. And frankly, they’ve been too hit or miss for the Pittsburgh Steelers on run defense this year. But in the end, I’m not too worried about the run defense. We’ve seen, you know, this unit play good football. I, you know, Deshawn Elliott’s healthy, Jaylen Ramsay’s healthy, Derrick Harman is healthy. You know, you know, I I’m I’m not overly worried about this run defense at this point. We’ve seen enough good film from this unit to think that it’s going to be better in the weeks to come. Not only that, I think that the entire defense will get there as well. Okay, now maybe this is just the fan in me. Maybe this is just me drinking the copium and the hopium, all this different stuff. But I really do think guys that the Pittsburgh Steelers are just a few little tweaks away from really bringing this defense to the next level, just like making that tweak by going to the jumbo personnel looks on offense this year. Completely changed the Pittsburgh Steelers offense. And it wasn’t like a major shift, right? They still ran a lot of 12 and 13 personnel before they went to the jumbo looks, but you know, Pat Fmouth and John Smith weren’t getting the job done, but Darnell Washington and Spencer Anderson are. So, it’s just a little tweak. And I think if the Steelers make those similar tweaks, play less man. When you play man, have an intermediate zone defender. All right? Like rush with four more often. You don’t have to blitz as often with a pass rush as good as the Steelers have. Okay? Like some of these things, you just got to make these little tweaks. Do your job in the run game. And I think the Pittsburgh Steelers can be one of the best defenses in the National Football League in the second half of the year. And hey, if this defense is playing the ball that we thought that they could be capable of playing at the end of the season, I think that that I would rather take that than what happened last year where they played phenomenal ball in the first half of the year and then fell down down the stretch, right? So, I think it’s important that this team needs to be playing their best ball once we get to January. In the meantime, they need to keep stacking wins and I hope that they can continue to do that. And frankly, if this defense can turn it around with the way the offense is playing right now, I still think the potential for the Pittsburgh Steelers is that they could be a legitimate Super Bowl contender by the time we get to January. But, as we talked about on today’s video, some tweaks need to be made to the defense if that’s going to happen. So, let me know what you guys think down there in the comments section. What’s your take on the reaction to the Steelers loss versus Cincinnati last week? Do you think it’s reasonable for people to panic about that loss or do you think it’s an overreaction? Type O. if you think people are overreacting or type R if you think people are being reasonable about uh their panic surrounding the Pittsburgh Steelers. All right, man. This has been another kind of beast of a video here on Steelers Talk. I want to thank you guys so much uh for supporting our channel. We try to give you guys nuanced, in-depth, contextualized uh Steelers content based on the film here on Steelers Talk. We try to back up what we say with numbers and with facts. And I hope that we have provided for that for you guys today. Uh we’re going to have a news and rumors segment come out later uh in the evening here. Talk about any trade rumors that come out. Uh anything that comes out surrounding maybe MVS or something like that. Um if that you know pops up here today. So make sure you guys click that subscribe button uh for our coverage of the latest news and rumors surrounding the Pittsburgh Steelers later this evening. Until next time, guys. Here we go. Steelers.

Steelers Talk by Chat Sports on Monday, October 20th, takes a deep dive into the Steelers defense in 2025 where host Jack Sperry shares what he believes is the biggest problem with the Steelers defense that Mike Tomlin and Teryl Austin must fix before the end of the season if this unit is going to turn things around before the NFL playoffs. On today’s show, Jack breaks down why and how the Steelers are underperforming tells you the biggest misconception people have about the Steelers defense, what the biggest problem actually is, and how the Steelers can go about fixing it.

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Steelers Defensive Rankings:
– PPG Allowed: 23.3 (18th)
– YPG Allowed: 374.7 (28th)
– YPP Allowed: 5.4 (18th)
– EPA/Play: 0.061 (24th)
– Success Rate: 45.8% (19th)
– 3rd Down%: 41.8% (25th)
– Red Zone%: 47.8% (3rd)
– Takeaways: 10 (5th)

Pittsburgh Steelers’ Massive Defensive Contracts:
– T.J. Watt (OLB): 3 Years, $123.0 MM
– Jalen Ramsey (CB): 4 Years, $84.7 MM
– Alex Highsmith (OLB): 4 Years, $68.0 MM
– Patrick Queen (ILB): 3 Years, $41.0 MM
– Cam Heyward (DT): 2 Years, $29.0 MM

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Mike Tomlin On His Defensive Vision:
“You gotta be able to play man to man, particularly vs. the elite and deep groups. And the talent that we’ve acquired at that position, particularly the CB position, allows us to do that in all circumstances. When you got guys like Jalen Ramsey & Slay & JPJ, man, we can match up & play man-to-man vs. anyone.”

Let your voice be heard by answering today’s questions on the Pittsburgh Steelers:
– What is the biggest issue with the Steelers defense this year?
– What’s your take on the reaction to PIT’s performance last week?
Type ‘O’ for Overreaction, Type ‘R’ for Reasonable

Check out more Steelers football content on YouTube with some of our latest videos:
– Steelers Rumors: PIT’s Likely Answer At The WR Position REVEALED – Who It Is + Why Fans Will HATE It https://youtu.be/0MHcAn7ps8o
– Steelers Rumors: Stick With Will Howard Or DRAFT A QB In RD1 Next Year? + WR Trade Coming Soon? https://youtu.be/bUKrolLQdOw
– It’s Time To Have An HONEST Discussion About The Pittsburgh Steelers Defense This Season… https://youtu.be/o16tVOjaAmk

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